Founders Of Teotihuacan review

Founders of Teotihuacan is a tile laying game. It says so right on the box. It is also the second game from Board & Dice to be set in Teotihuacan. Aside from the setting, it has little in common with its namesake, or other games in the ‘T-series’. This is very much its own thing. A thing that is very much worth exploring.

Laying The Foundations

Founders of Teotihuacan sees players placing workers (action discs, but same difference) in one of 3 action areas on the main board and then taking the corresponding build action or an influence action.

The build action allows players to build either a resource producing building, or a temple, or add to their central pyramid. Resources are added to your city adjacent to your resource buildings. This means that building them in places with a bit of space around them will result in you gaining more resource cubes.

The temples link to the central pyramid for end of game scoring. Favour tiles gained from building temples, allow for more in game benefits and scoring when activated.

Placing these discs, instead of traditional worker placement meeples, adds another layer to your decision making. The more discs there are in a stack, the stronger the available action. Placing the first disc gets you strength 2 action, but also a nice bonus. Placing the third disc bags you a strength 4 action, needed to construct the largest buildings, or build temples and pyramid tiles most efficiently. You can not place any further discs on top of a stack of 3.

Supplies of the different building, temple and pyramid tiles are limited. This provides players with the dilemma of whether to place more than one action disc on the stack, giving them access to building tiles more efficiently, at the cost of giving up one or more actions they could have taken later in the round.

Instead of building, players can take an influence action instead. This will allow them to produce more resources, build 2 single square buildings, activate gathered worship tiles, or advance on a point track, which also allows players to trade their worship tiles for (hopefully!) more favourable ones.

Building Strategy

Founders of Teotihuacan is part spacial awareness puzzle, part resource management, part action economy and plenty of time pressure.

There is a real tension created by the limited supply of buildings, temples and tiles each round, causing players to seriously consider spending additional action discs to get the piece they want. There is also pressure on players to completely cover the mask spaces on their player boards first, maximising their point scoring. These mask spaces are cleverly designed though, causing players to be less efficient in gaining resources if they go for covering the mask spaces with their buildings.

Further time pressure is caused by players’ architect meeples having a limited reach. In any round, players can only build on one half of their player board. This means that players need to maximise their point scoring each round whilst they can, as the North, East, South and West sections of their boards will only be accessible for one round each game.

All of this adds up to an engaging challenge of trying to balance competing priorities. It is not a difficult game to grasp by any means, but there are interesting and meaningful choices to be had by players each and every turn. It is a tile laying game, but where you place the tiles is only part of what players need to consider on their turns.

I Build Alone…

Founders of Teotihuacan comes with an excellent solo mode. It is a ‘beat-your-own-score’ type solo mode, but with a straight forward to operate bot opponent placing discs and taking tiles each turn, limiting players’ options.

Players also have to roll up 3 additional objectives at the start of the game. To win, they have to meet all 3 objectives and beat the target score of 80 points. Objectives can range from things like ‘the pyramid must be complete’ or ‘score 4 green worship tiles’. A particularly difficult one I rolled up was ‘players have -1 action strength’.

The challenges are an excellent addition to the solo game and provide good variety. Overall, the solo mode is easy to run and gets out of the way, allowing players to concentrate on the fun part; planning and executing their turns. Thankfully, there is no spending more time on the bot’s turn than your own here.

Flawless Founders?

Founders of Teotihuacan is not perfect. There are a lot of different tiles and if you like to organise by type, sorting the tiles so that each type has their own baggy, yes, you can do that here. You will also find set-up and tear-down a bit of a chore.

As well as the different types of tiles, there are 3 types of resource cubes and if you organise it all meticulously, you will probably need some sort of insert to speed up set-up.

It won’t be for everyone, but aside from the worship tiles that I have bagged, all the other tiles I store loose in the box. This is because there is enough clear and obvious difference between all the tiles, that I can easily find what I need without having to separate out any of the tiles. This allows me to set the game up and get playing quickly and efficiently and saves an awful lot of time.

The player boards feature asymmetric set ups on the reverse, with different printed pyramid bonuses. If you choose to play with that side, be aware that some boards have no gold buildings as bonuses and these are arguably harder to play with. Not a major problem, and can help balance the game when players have differing levels of experience, but some may find certain boards are more advantageous than others. If that is a concern to players at the table, they would probably be better off using the side that gives all players the same starting board.

Building To A Conclusion

I wasn’t sure if Founders of Teotihuacan would be my cup of tiling tea. I’d had mixed experiences with polyomino and tiling games in the past. I’m not a fan of Carcassonne. Barenpark is fine, but wouldn’t be my first choice. Patchwork, on the other hand, I do love and is my favourite pure polyomino game.

Founders of Teotihuacan gets better and better, the more I play it. The combination of worker placement, polyomino puzzling and resource management makes it far more interesting to me than other tile laying games. No, it’s not the best looking game in the world. Yes, if you store the tiles like I do, the box contents will look a mess at a glance. Go beyond that and what you will find is a thoughtful, interesting, accessible euro game.

If you like the sound of a tile laying game that has a bit more to it, whether you play it multiplayer or solo, Founders of Teotihuacan is worthy of your consideration.